1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a magnetic tape library device. More specifically, the present invention relates to a magnetic tape library device which includes a plurality of magnetic tape cartridges (simply referred to as cartridges hereinafter), a magnetic tape drive, an accessor for executing transportation of the cartridges mutually, and a cartridge housing shelf (simply referred to as a magazine hereinafter) that is detachable from a device main body, with which the number of rolls of exchangeable cartridges at the time of mailslot can be made appropriate through restricting the number of exchangeable cartridges of the magazine only at the time of mailslot.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, it is common to draw out the entire magazine from the device main body, and to extract a cartridge from a desired cell to exchange the cartridge when exchanging the cartridges housed, respectively, in multiple numbers of cells within the magazine.
However, when a specific cartridge of a particularly high use frequency is housed in a cell on the front-row side of the magazine drawing direction, for example, it is possible to exchange the cartridge with less effort by drawing out only the front row instead of drawing out the entire magazine and exchanging the specific cartridge at that position.
Further, as a device developed for such case, there is known a magnetic tape library device provided with a mailslot mechanism that makes it possible to exchange only a specific cartridge (see Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication 2009-230839 (Patent Document 1), for example). That is, the library device disclosed in Patent Document 1 is in the structure as shown in FIGS. 24 to 29.
FIG. 24 is an overall perspective view of a state where a magazine is partially drawn from a casing at the time of the mailslot function.
As shown in FIG. 24, a library device 100 is structured to be able to insert/extract a magazine 102 to/from a casing 101.
An accessor 103 is disposed on one of the sides of the place where the magazine 102 is disposed.
The accessor 103 can move reciprocally along the inserting/extracting direction M of the magazine 102.
Further, the accessor 103 is designed to extract, to house, and to move (transport the cartridge) the cartridge according to control signals inputted from a controller 105.
Further, regarding the accessor 103, a moving range H1 under a magazine extraction restricting operation is set on an extended line of a moving range H of normal operations (extracting and housing the cartridge from/to the magazine 102, setting and detaching the cartridge to/from the magnetic tape drive 104).
The magazine extraction restricting action will be described in details in a later part.
Next, the structure of the magazine 102 will be shown based on FIG. 25. FIG. 25 is a perspective view showing the bottom face of the magazine 102.
Inside the magazine 102 is sectioned into a plurality of cells 102a01 to 102a04 which are housing chambers of the cartridges (not shown). Further, as described above, the cartridges can be housed in each of the cells 102a01 to 102a04.
In a bottom face 102c of the magazine 102, a guide rail 102d is placed substantially in parallel to the inserting/extracting direction M (see FIG. 24). On the side face (on the center right side of FIG. 25) on the side closer to the accessor 103 (see FIG. 24) of the guide rail 102d, a first step 102e01, a second step 102e02, and a third step 102e03, for example, are formed.
FIG. 26 shows the structure of the front part of the casing 101.
That is, in a magazine housing section 101a that houses the magazine 102, a lock lever 106 and a rail 113 are placed. The lock lever 106 is placed in the casing 101 via a lock lever attaching shaft 112. Further, the lock lever 106 is rotatable within a parallel plane that is substantially the same as a bottom face 101b of the casing 101.
The lock lever 106 is placed in such a manner that a part thereof comes between the casing 101 and the bottom face 102c of the magazine 102 when the magazine 102 is being housed.
Hereinafter, the part of the lock lever 106 disposed in the gap between the bottom face 102c of the magazine 102 and the casing 101 when the magazine is being housed is referred to as an engagement part.
Further, a part of the lock lever 106 is disposed to locate on the running path of the accessor 103. Torque is generated when the accessor 103 abuts against the part of the lock lever 106, and the lock lever 106 is rotated by having the lock lever attaching shaft 112 as an axle.
Further, a lock lever spring 111 is attached to the lock lever 106. Thereby, the engaging part is energized towards the rail 113 side.
It is so designed that the first step 102e01 and the lock lever 106 are engaged at the position where the one row of the cell section 102A of the magazine 102 is drawn out from the casing 101 under such state, so that only the very front cell (102a01) of the cell section 102A inside the magazine 102 can be drawn out to the position exposed to the outside of the casing 101.
Hereinafter, the action of drawing out the magazine 102 from the casing 101 in the library device 100 (the magazine extraction restriction release operation) will be described.
As shown in FIGS. 27A and 27B, when the accessor 103 is brought forward along the inserting/extracting direction M from the state where the magazine 102 is housed in the casing 101, the accessor 103 pushes a part of the lock lever 106 and overpowers the elastic force of the lock lever spring 111 to rotate the lock lever 106 as shown in FIG. 28.
When the magazine 102 is dawn out from the casing 101 by hand under such state, the magazine 102 can be stopped in a state where the one row in the very front cells of the cell section is being drawn out from the device front face.
This provides a state (referred to as mailslot) where the user can exchange only the cartridge containing a limited cell within the magazine 102, i.e., a specific cell (102a01), so that it is effective when the user wishes to exchange a small amount of cartridge.
That is, only the specific cartridge is exchanged, so that required is only a small amount of action (referred to as inventory hereinafter) while saving actions for recognizing all the cartridges loaded on the device side. This results in shortening the time for the inventory.
When the accessor 103 is further brought forward to rotate the lock lever 106 further by overpowering the elastic force of the lock lever spring 111, the engaging part is not engaged with all the steps on the guide rail 102d, i.e., the first to third steps 102e01, 102e02, and 102e03, as shown in FIG. 29. Under such state, the entire magazine 102 can be drawn out from the casing 101 completely.
Recently, high-density packaging of the cartridges is making progress. For example, it has come to use a magnetic tape library device that employs a 2U magazine in which a large number of cartridges are mounted by connecting two units in the inserting/extracting direction and loading cartridges in a plurality of stages along the height direction of the respective units.
With such magnetic tape library device, there is also a case where it is required to perform the mailslot function described above.
However, when a cartridge is to be exchanged by employing the mailslot function disclosed in the magnetic tape library device disclosed in Patent Document 1 described above to the magazine such as the 2U magazine where a plurality of stages such as three stages of cartridges are loaded in the height direction, three cartridges are stacked vertically in one line in the cell of the front row of the cell section extracted out from the front face of the device main body in the case of the 2U magazine or the like when the magazine is drawn out from the device main body to the mailslot position.
Thus, all of those cartridges become exchangeable, so that those other than the required cartridge can also be in an exchangeable state. Therefore, a large number of the cartridges other than the cartridge designated by the user are in an exchangeable state, so that the user needs to go through a trouble of finding the cartridge to be exchanged.
Further, it is not supposed to do inventory for the cartridges that are not exchanged. However, it becomes necessary to do the inventory for all the cartridges that are in an exchangeable state in terms of the function at the time of the mailslot function. Therefore, the time for the inventory after stopping the employment of the mailslot function is extended, which results in deterioration of the performance.
An exemplary object of the present invention is to provide a magnetic tape library device which can easily extract and exchange a specific cartridge required to be exchanged at the time of the mailslot function and can shorten the time for inventory with a simple structure even with the magazine in the structure where a plurality of stages of cells for housing the magnetic tape cartridges inside thereof are loaded.